Organizations such as on-line retailers, Internet service providers, search providers, financial institutions, universities, and other computing-intensive organizations often conduct computer operations from large scale computing facilities. Such computing facilities house and accommodate a large amount of server, network, and computer equipment to process, store, and exchange data as needed to carried out an organization's operations. Typically, a computer room of a computing facility includes many server racks. Each server rack, in turn, includes many servers and associated computer equipment.
In many rack-mounted servers, circuit boards for the servers are housed in a rack-mounted chassis. Typically, the chassis houses a motherboard assembly, additional circuit boards, such as memory modules, coupled to the motherboard assembly, and a power supply for the electrical component in the chassis. The chassis may also house hard disk drives, fans, or other components.
Having a dedicated power supply in the chassis of a server may take a substantial amount of space in a chassis and produce a significant amount of waste heat in a system. In addition, such power supplies may be relatively inefficient components of the system. Among other things, having a dedicated power supply for each individual server in a rack system is likely to result in excess capacity relative to the load for the system. For example, in a server rack system having 40 servers, each server may include a standard, off-the-shelf power supply with a 350 watt capacity, for a total capacity of 14,000 watts. The maximum load of each server may, however, be only about 250 watts, for a total power requirement of about 10,000 watts.
Some systems are known in which a single power supply provides power to more than one server in a rack. Using such common power supplies may, however, require that the servers be modified to receive power from a power source external to the chassis of the servers, instead of from a conventional power supply inside the chassis. Such modifications to the servers to accommodate a common power supply add cost and complexity to a computing system.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.